wake up and smell the coffee

present singular third person wakes up and smells the coffee · participle present waking up and smelling the coffee · past woke up and smelled the coffee · past woke up and smelt the coffee · participle past woken up and smelled the coffee · participle past woken up and smelt the coffee

1. PhilippinesUSidiomaticinformalOften in the infinitive or imperative: to face reality and stop deluding oneself.

   Wake up and smell the coffee, Dummy. You're a comfort station on a back-street detour. Send him on his way.

   1970 November 29, Ann Landers [pseudonym; Esther Pauline “Eppie” Lederer], “Wake up, smell the coffee”, in The News & Observer, volume CC, number 152, Raleigh, N.C.: News & Observer Pub. Co., →ISSN, →OCLC, section III (Today’s Woman), page 20, column 4

   4 more examples

   Your paper gains "notice" as an example of the use of English as it should not be written nor spoken. Wake up and smell the coffee.

   1927 June 4, Purist [pseudonym], “Smelling the coffee [letter]”, in John S[hivley] Knight, editor, Akron Beacon Journal, number 157, Akron, Oh.: Beacon Journal Co., →OCLC, page 4, column 5

   A few years back, when a wife told her husband to "wake up and smell the coffee," it usually was said in utter derision. Now, when there is coffee to smell, she shouts it to him in supreme delight.

   1943 January 18, Guy Finamore, “Rationing dept.”, in Chicago Daily Tribune, volume CII, number 15, Chicago, Ill.: Wheeler, Stewart & Scripps, →OCLC, page 17, column 2

   Dear God, was she going to look at everybody who owned a truck with this sort of suspicion? “Come on, Heskell. Wake up and smell the coffee. They've become the singles bars of the nineties.[…]”

   1997 October, Joanna Elm, chapter 6, in Delusion, 1st mass market edition, New York, N.Y.: Tor Books, published January 1999, →ISBN, page 51

   He had opened his eyes, which was what his first wife was always telling him to do—open your eyes, Al, wake up and smell the coffee—and seen that Rosalind was at least as unhappy as he was, […]

   2000, Jane Smiley, “Breeders’ Cup”, in Horse Heaven, 1st trade paperback edition, New York, N.Y.: Ballantine Books, published 2001, →ISBN, book 2 (1998), page 319

   Synonyms: open one's eyes, take the hint, wake up and smell the ashes, wake up and smell the decaf, wake up and smell the roses